Here are the key events on day 1,275 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Here is how things stand on Friday, August 22:
A Ukrainian combined missile and drone attack killed two people and injured 21 in the industrial city of Yenakiyeve, according to Denis Pushilin, the Russia-installed governor of the occupied areas of Ukraine’s Donetsk region. The attack also damaged several residential buildings in the city and the nearby city of Horlivka.
Russian Defence Minister Andrei Belousov visited the “north” group of forces fighting in Ukraine, where he was briefed on the battlefield situation there, Zvezda, the official media outlet of the Ministry of Defence, reported.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that large-scale Russian attacks overnight in various parts of Ukraine showed Moscow was avoiding negotiations about ending the more than three-year-long war.
Russia’s latest strikes involved 574 drones and 40 missiles, President Zelenskyy said, and were one of the largest of Russia’s attacks so far on Ukraine. One person was killed and 22 were wounded in the overnight strikes, authorities said.
Zelenskyy also said that a Russian attack on an American civilian business enterprise in Ukraine’s Zakarpattia region injured 15 people.
A fire has started following a drone strike in Russia’s southern Novoshakhtinsk city, home to an oil refinery, authorities said, as Ukraine stepped up attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure. The Novoshakhtinsk refinery, which sells fuel mainly for export, has an annual capacity of five million metric tonnes of oil, or about 100,000 barrels per day.
European NATO leaders must not be naive when discussing a Ukraine peacekeeping force but face up to the reality that they would need to deploy tens of thousands of troops to the country for the long term, the head of Germany’s soldiers’ union, Colonel Andre Wuestner, said.
Military chiefs from the US and a number of European countries have presented options to their national security advisers for providing security guarantees to Ukraine, officials said.
A Ukrainian man has been arrested in Italy on suspicion of coordinating attacks on three Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022, officials said. The attack largely severed Russian gas supplies to Europe and had been described by both Moscow and the West as an act of sabotage.
Ukraine’s dollar bonds suffered their largest losses in more than four months as the prospect of a peace deal with Russia appeared to fade.